Anorexics ‘use violent methods to lose weight’
Others admitted to eating tissues or cotton wool to take away hunger pangs, according to the November edition of Cosmopolitan magazine.
Deanne Jade, head of the National Centre for Eating Disorders in Britain, warned anorexic and bulimic women are using increasingly desperate and violent methods to try to lose weight.
In Britain, 1.1 million people suffer from eating disorders. Ninety per cent of them are women and the number is growing.
Ms Jade estimates around 1% of bulimics and anorexics have Extreme Eating Disorders (EED).
“An EED is the escalation of a ‘normal’ eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia,” she said.
“When someone is alone or distressed they can lose sight of what’s dangerous and become unconcerned about the risks they are taking.”
One 34-year-old woman from Sheffield, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Cosmopolitan she began removing blood in the mistaken belief it would make her lose weight.
The woman, who has bulimia, was giving blood one day when she told the nurse she was going swimming afterwards.
The nurse said it would put too much stress on her body as it had to make up the blood lost.
“I felt so excited, thinking, ‘If I give blood my body has to work harder, so I’ll lose weight’,” she said.
After being told she could not give blood again within a fortnight, she decided to use a syringe to remove blood herself.
“It really hurt, but afterwards I felt a sense of relief.
“Within a year I was removing a small jug full of blood about twice a week,” she said.
“Whenever I had a bingeing session, I’d remove blood, then be sick.”
She has since discovered blood letting will not make her lose weight as the metabolic rate slows down so the body can concentrate on making up lost blood.
Despite this and the fact she has been told she will die if she carries on, she cannot stop.
Annette Thorpe, 33, from Lincolnshire, has suffered from eating disorders including bulimia since her father’s death in her teens.
She began chewing on a tissue during her exams and found that it stopped her hunger pangs.
“Within a couple of weeks, I was eating three man-size tissues a day,” she said.
“The side effects were terrible. It made me really constipated and I’d get agonising stomach cramps.”
As well as eating tissues, she began binge eating, making herself sick and then taking laxatives to ease the constipation.
A few months later she was diagnosed as having Irritable Bowel Syndrome and was shocked into stopping.
